MAD DOG AND ANNIE (21 page)

"Today?
What about next week? What about every day between now and the trial?" She shook her head, frustrated by his inability to see and her own inability to act. "I can't live my life waiting for my ex-husband to jump out of the bushes. Rob spent years controlling me. I let him use my fear to control me. I'm not going to let him do it anymore."

"You need to be careful."

"I need to be
normal
." The words burst out. "I need to get on with my life. And that doesn't include you driving me everywhere like some kind of bodyguard."

"Doesn't include me, you mean."

She was shaken. "That's not what I said."

He was slapping his pockets, looking increasingly disgusted.
With her?
With himself?
With the whole situation?

"I need a smoke," he said.

Perfect. He was turning back into a chain-smoker, and that was her fault, too. "Don't let me stop you."

He glowered. "You're not. I can't find a match."

"I'm sorry. I can't help you. I don't smoke."

"I know that," he said impatiently. "I just figured you might have matches for people who—" An arrested expression crossed his face.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I just thought of something I should do."

She frowned. He might as well have patted her on the head. "What?"

He bent his head to kiss her, a brief, hard kiss tasting of coffee. His stubble brushed her cheek. Despite her chagrin, something inside her softened and loosened.

"It's a long shot. I'll let you know if it works out," he promised.

* * *

Ann let herself into the house on
Stonewall Drive
with an old key and sweaty palms
. Her heart beat so high in her throat she thought she might choke.

But Maddox Palmer wasn't the only one who thought of things to do.

Not that
he
would think of breaking and entering, she thought with a spurt of near-hysterical humor. Not that he would approve of what she was about to do. He was an officer of the law.

But Ann had broken the law already, at first unknowingly and then unwillingly and always for the wrong reasons. Maybe now she could bend it for the right ones, to protect the people she loved: Val and Mitchell and, God help her, Maddox, too.

She closed the front door behind her, and her past rushed in on her.

Nothing had changed. A row of gold-framed botanical prints she'd ordered from a catalogue still marched above the chair rail in the dining room. The custom-made drapes, stiff with starch, swooped over the front windows. A lamp shaped like a duck decoy angled its light over Rob's
Barca
-Lounger. It was still her house, her pride, her prison, constructed bit by bit of matching paint chips and fabric samples. She had the creepy feeling she'd left this morning instead of twelve months ago.

She shivered.

Maybe when I get a photo, it will jog somebody's memory.

She had photos, albums and albums lining a living room shelf, all posed and preserved to support the illusion of the perfect family living a well-ordered life. Egg hunts, beach trips, trick-or-treating, with the focus on Mitchell and Rob scowling in the background.

Oh, yes, she had pictures. She hadn't had time to take them with her. And now, looking at them made her a little sick.

Kneeling on the living room carpet, she selected a recent snapshot—Rob's thirtieth birthday celebration at the club—and stuffed it in her purse and took a deep breath. What else?

I got a subpoena for the motel's charge records from a year ago,
Maddox had said, but they'll take a while to wade through.

Maybe while she was here she could look at
Rob's
records? Maybe she could prove he had used the motel.

She hurried through the living room to Rob's home office, past Mitchell's baby portrait and the coffee table where she'd hit her head one night when Rob had knocked her down. The vacuumed carpet revealed a patch where she'd knelt and the track of her flat-soled shoes. He must use a cleaning service now.

She wondered how they did with bloodstains.

Receipts were filed in the corner cabinet of Rob's office. He settled the household bills. Settled them and sorted them and scrutinized them for extravagance.
Look at this water bill
, he'd complain, but she was the one who paid for the dripping faucet or watered lawn in tears and bruises and shame.

She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. She wasn't looking for utility bills, she reminded herself. She wanted credit card records, proof that would clear Val's husband and implicate her own. She reached for the metal handle, and the file drawer clattered in its frame.

It was locked.

She almost thought,
Oh, good. Now I can go home
. But that was the old Annie thinking, the old Annie acting. Or rather, not acting, just giving up again.

She could do better. She had the photo, didn't she? And she wasn't due at the restaurant for another forty-five minutes. She squared her shoulders.
Plenty of time to find a key and open a file and save her friend and her own self-respect.

She approached the desk—Rob's desk—and gingerly slid open the top drawer. The file key was in plain sight, easily accessible.

So was the gun.

Her stomach jumped up to join her heart in her throat. She knew Rob kept a gun, of course, against her will and over her protests. But when had her will or her protests ever mattered in this house? At least he'd never threatened her with it.

Not while he could get at you with his fists
. Maddox's reminder echoed in her head.

She slammed the drawer shut. Opened it again to take the key, ignoring the faint rattle that announced her hand was shaking.

Rob wasn't here. He was at his office. All she had to do—she drew a deep breath—all she had to do was open the file and check the Visa and
Mastercard
statements from last year to see if he'd ever charged a room at Beyer's Motel.

He hadn't. With one eye on her watch and her attention on the door, she examined the contents of folder after folder, spreading the pages across Rob's desk.
The desk with the gun.

She resisted the urge to look at it again, running her finger instead down printed lists of names and numbers.
Charges for golf clubs and gas, for shoes and wine.
No motels. No Beyer's, not in May or April or any month last year.

She shuffled the papers back together, fighting discouragement. At least she had the photo. Maybe Maddox would be able to get a positive ID from someone who worked at the motel. And now he wouldn't have to waste his time plodding through the motel's records. She tucked the folders away in hanging files, locked the cabinet and opened the desk to return the key.

The gun was there, dark and smooth as a snake coiled under the porch steps.

You never told me he was armed.

A man has a legal right to his guns.

Her heart pounded. Her head did, too. She didn't think Rob would take his gun after her, after Mitchell, but then, she'd never thought he would hit her, either.

The gun waited in the drawer.
Accessible.
Tempting.
She almost picked it up herself, and she hated guns. Rob would have no hesitation reaching for it. She shivered.

She could take it. And add illegal possession of a firearm to breaking and entering? No.

She could hide it.

Now, there was an idea. If he couldn't find it, he couldn't use it. And it wouldn't be theft, since she wasn't removing it from the house.

But where?
Not in the rose-and-cream bedroom she'd once shared with Rob. Not in the kitchen.
Never in Mitchell's room.
No place
it could
be stumbled over, nowhere Rob would go… The attic, she thought.

She grabbed the gun by the barrel so she couldn't accidentally touch the trigger, and hurried up the stairs, holding it away from her body at an awkward angle. Twenty-five minutes until she was due at Wild Thymes.

She was sweating. The attic was hot. The hanging bulb threw sharp shadows around the piled cartons, the out-of-season clothes and discarded toys.

Where did you hide a gun? She was a nice girl, not a career criminal, even if she was convicted of stealing twenty thousand dollars from her best friend. Somewhere Mitchell would never look by accident, someplace Rob would never find…

Her wildly searching gaze settled on a box by the water heater. Drapes, she thought. The old living room drapes, relegated to a carton after the new ones were hung. Perfect. Rob would never look there.

She tugged the flaps open, pushed the beige fabric aside and shoved the gun deep in the box.

She ran down the steps and stood a moment in the hall, her pulse thundering in her ears. Would Rob be able to tell she'd been here? She'd locked the file cabinet, closed the attic door.

Reaching for the front door, she gave one last glance over her shoulder, and saw her footprints marching over the carpet toward Rob's office.

Her heart stumbled. Not a problem, she thought. She would just vacuum before she left. She had—she checked her watch—seventeen minutes.

She pulled the upright from the hall closet and hastily erased her tracks from the living room, working back toward the hardwood floor of the hall. She yanked at the plug and wrapped the cord neatly before stowing the vacuum away. She pushed it under Rob's coats, where it bumped into something long and padded and propped in a corner.

She sucked in her breath in dismay.
The rifle.
Mitchell's rifle.
She hadn't disarmed Rob at all.

Her mind darted back to the box in the attic. The tall gun wouldn't fit there. It wouldn't fit anywhere, really, which was why it was in the closet in the first place along with Rob's tennis racket and the dustpan and broom.

Dear Lord. Twelve minutes. She had to go. And the rifle would have to go with her. What was another charge against her compared to Mitchell's safety?

She held the padded case awkwardly in front of her as she hurried to the car. The zippered pocket that held the shells scraped against her legs. Besides, she wasn't really stealing, she argued with her conscience. It was Mitchell's gun, purchased for a deer hunting trip that thankfully never took place.

Mitchell. She clutched the thought of her precious son to her more tightly than any gun. She was only doing this to protect Mitchell. It wasn't like she was going to shoot the awful thing. She didn't even want to touch it. She was just taking it away from Rob.

She laid the rifle case carefully in the trunk of her car, as if it would explode, and drove to work.

Chapter 15

«
^
»

A
nn's first thought when she saw Maddox standing on her front porch, eyes shaded by the brim of his uniform hat, was that he must be there about the gun. Visions of handcuffs danced briefly in her head.

And then reason returned. For one thing, Rob wouldn't even be home yet to notice and report the loss of his guns. Nobody on her street had been around half an hour ago to see her smuggle the rifle from the car trunk to her bedroom closet.

For another, if Maddox were there to arrest her, he would hardly be smiling.

She opened the door. His smile broadened into that wide, warm, you-and-me-babe grin that had flattened her in junior high. Her pulse spurted for reasons that didn't have anything to do with him locking her up.

"You look—"
Relaxed.
Satisfied.
Sexy
.
"Pleased with yourself."

"Pleased with the investigation."

His cool cop routine didn't fool her for a minute. She searched his face. "It's good?"

"It's very good. I don't think Rob can take custody of Mitchell if he's serving fifteen to twenty for arson and attempted murder."

Hope fluttered in her stomach. "What happened? What did you find?"

"Something you said this morning set me off." He took off his hat. "How you didn't carry matches because you don't smoke?"

She nodded, distracted by the way the sunlight tipped his sandy hair with gold. But she remembered their conversation.

"See, Rob does. He told me he likes to be prepared for his clients who smoke. And then he tossed me a matchbook." Maddox paused significantly.
"From his golf bag."

She blinked at him. "Motel matches?"

Maddox grinned. "Now that would have been too easy. But this morning I got a warrant to search the golf bag, and he's got like a dozen matchbooks stuffed in the pocket, and one of
them's
from Beyer's Motel. So we've got a nice little link to the arson there, and your friend's husband doesn't look so good for insurance fraud anymore."

"Well." It was hard to think with him smiling at her, his grimly handsome face relaxed and easy. She opened the door wider. "Wonderful. Come in. I found a photo for you.
Of Rob."
She led the way to the living room. Her purse was on the couch. She rifled through it. "Here."

He took the snapshot. Glancing at it, he put it away in the breast pocket of his uniform. "That's great. I'll try again for a supporting ID at the motel." But he made no move to go.

"Can I get you some tea?" she offered.

"No tea." He took a step toward her.

She felt her breath go at the look in his eyes. She started to smile back, relief lightening the burden of guilt she'd carried for so long. "Then what can I possibly give you?"

"Got any cookies?"

She laughed. "It's Tuesday. I only bake on the weekends."

Which was nonsense, of course, but it was sweet nonsense. She hadn't known what it was like to laugh with a man she was in love—having sex with. She liked it.

He came closer. Close enough for her to feel his body heat. Close enough that, if she wanted, she could lay her head on his uniform shirt and absorb that strength and warmth into
herself
. He was so big, but she didn't feel threatened. Actually, she found his size reassuring, even … exciting.

He raised his eyebrows.
Lowered his voice.
"So, you don't have anything left over?
From this weekend?"

This weekend.
He meant Saturday night. Out on the river road, in the dark, with Maddox… Her heart began to pound in earnest.

"I maybe could find something," she said breathlessly.

"Let me help you look," he whispered, and bent to her. His lips were firm and warm. He brushed them against hers with soft, light, teasing kisses that made her sigh and want. Want more. Want Maddox. She opened to him, inviting the slick, smooth entry of his tongue, standing on tiptoe to push her breasts into the solid wall of his chest.

"I think you, um, found it," she said, when at last he raised his head.

His full mouth quirked.
"I'm a policeman. I'm supposed to find things."

And there it was, she realized, the reason for the difference she sensed in him. Since coming home, he'd worked his way toward a cautious peace with himself and with his job. She was glad of it, glad for him, even as his returning confidence emphasized the differences between them. She'd never been much good at anything.

"Well, you do it very well," she told him solemnly.

Color crept into his tanned cheeks. "You don't mind?"

"Mind what?"

Hesitation entered his eyes, attractive, beguiling. "That I've had—some experience."

Other women, he meant. He was worried about what she thought. He cared how she felt. Ann's heart swelled. So maybe she was good for something, after all. She took his hand and laid it on her breast.

"No," she said simply. "Why don't you see what else you can find?"

He went very still. And then his thumb brushed her nipple, already puckered with arousal.

"Well, there's this," he murmured.

"Evidence," she said.

He smiled faintly, his hooded gaze holding hers.
"Yeah?
What does it prove?"

"That I want you."

She'd surprised them both.

He drew a hard breath. His eyes were nearly black. "Annie.
Darlin'.
You're a good woman—"

Her mouth twisted. "Is that like being a nice girl?"

"No. Yes. I don't want your neighbors to think—"

"I'm tired of worrying what my neighbors will think. I've been worried about what people will think of me all my life."

"But my car's parked outside."

"We-e-e-
ll
…
It's the middle of the afternoon. You could be interviewing me."

"That's not all I could be doing to you," he said with grim humor.

"Then why don't you?" she whispered.

It was as if her words broke the tight grip he kept on himself, on his body. He lunged, and she had what she wanted, Maddox holding her, Maddox kissing her, deeply, fiercely, possessively, his tongue driving into her mouth, his body hard and hot against hers.

She should have been panicked. She was thrilled. She was freed.

She wrapped her arms around him and took everything he could give. He pulled at her blouse. She tore at his shirt. He pressed his mouth to the tender area between her neck and shoulder, and she gasped and bit his ear. He was on his knees in front of her, his breath shockingly hot through her skirt. She sank to the floor, sliding against his aroused body, her hand seeking a hold in the short hair of his nape.

They devoured each other, pressed breast to chest and belly to thigh. He felt so good, so warm and firm and solid against her. Nothing had ever felt this good. Pushing his shirt off his shoulders, she stopped, stunned by the sight of her pink nipples brushing the rough bronze hair of his chest.

They were making love in the light. In the middle of the afternoon, she thought wonderingly. She could see him, his square muscled torso above the navy of his uniform pants. Touch him, if she wanted. She wanted to touch him everywhere.

"Let's move this to the bedroom," he rasped.

She jerked. The rifle was in her bedroom. Maddox had told her it was illegal for a felon to transport a gun. She wasn't going to break the law by driving around with one in her trunk. Not that she was crazy about hiding one in her bedroom, either. Maddox didn't seem set on conducting a search of her closets, but still…

"No," she said. "Here.
Right here.
Right now."

His eyes fired, but he shook his head. "Let's take it easy. I need to slow down."

She smiled at him, her insides humming. Her mouth felt sore. She felt wonderful. "No, you don't."

"I don't want to—"

"—shock me?" She lay back against the carpet, supporting herself on her elbows. "You could try," she suggested hopefully.

His breath hissed out. He dug in his slacks for his wallet and pulled out a foil packet. And then he was kissing her again, her breasts, her belly, lower, licking, hot, until she writhed and arched and cried out. He dragged up his head, his face hard and intense. He moved up and over her. His thighs pushed her legs apart.

"Right here."
He gave her words back to her.
"Right now."

She shivered as she reached for him. He was heavy on top of her. He was deep inside of her. He touched her everywhere, inside and out. He thrust hard, but it wasn't rough. It was raw and real and fast and sweaty, and every time it felt like too much, she looked up and saw Maddox's burning eyes and the planes of his face, hard and gleaming. He was losing himself in her, not holding back, not in control, reassuring and exciting her at once.

She had never felt so safe.

She had never felt so loved.

She had never felt so free.

This time she didn't wait for the wave to take her. This time she swam out for it. She could feel the muscles of his back flex under her
palms,
feel the muscles of his arms and the rigid wall of his abdomen as he came into her again and again. She gripped hard, gripped him, felt him pulse and pound inside her, and she pulsed, too, with his rhythm, pulsed and shuddered and cried out "Oh" as the wave crashed and her ears roared and Maddox held her steady with his eyes.

"Annie," he said, just her name, naming her.
Seeing her.
Loving her.
And then his dark eyes squeezed shut, and his head reared back, and he gave himself all the way to her.

Ann lay under him, stroking his damp back, her breath uneven and her bottom raw against the carpet, and wondered how soon she could have this again.

His head dropped forward, and he exhaled, warm and gusty across her breasts. They puckered. He touched one nipple, very delicately, with his finger, and she shivered.

He lifted an eyebrow. "Okay?"

She moistened her lips and smiled.
"Very okay.
Can we do it again?"

"Okay." He let himself relax more fully against her, letting her take a portion of his weight. "Just give me a little time to recover. A year, maybe, and I'll be good as new."

Now that she'd found this, she didn't want to ever let it go. "I can't wait that long."

"I'll stick around," he
promised,
his eyes warm. "We could find something to do in the meantime. How long does it take to get a license in
North Carolina
?"

Her stomach caved, and it wasn't from the weight of him, hard and lovely above her.

"License?" she croaked.

"Yeah.
Marriage license."

When she collected her thoughts, when she found her voice again, she said, as firmly as she could, "We are not getting married."

* * *

Panic flared in Maddox.
She sounded so, so inflexible.
Annie, who was soft and giving and tenderhearted and everything he needed in his life. He fought to keep from overreacting.

Do not screw this up, he ordered himself. You are not going to screw this up.

Unless he already had.

He pushed the thought away. "We're not?" he asked cautiously.

She shook her head. Her smooth hair brushed the inside of his forearm, distracting him. She was lying under him, pink and warm from his loving, telling him "no."

"Why not?"

She thrust out her chin. "I've been married. This is better."

He could feel his temper rising, feel the tension collecting in the back of his neck. He wanted a cigarette, and not because it was after sex. He fought to keep his face neutral. "So, what is 'this'?"

"Well…" Her lashes swept down as she considered. Then she looked straight at him with her gorgeous green eyes and said, "This is two adults who are free to make their own choices coming together without obligations."

She sounded more like a psychologist than the woman he'd just loved.
"In other words, two uncommitted people having sex."

Her tongue moistened her lower lip. "That's not what I meant."

"Well, excuse me, but it sounded pretty damned uncommitted to me."

"And what about you?
What about your job?"

He levered his weight off her. His body protested the separation. "What about it?"

She turned on her side away from him, reaching for her blouse. "You're the one leaving town. You can't expect me to just pack up and follow you to
Atlanta
."

"I don't," he protested.

But Annie was on a roll. "Aside from the fact that I'm on probation, I have a job, I have my son—
What
did you say?"